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A Final Four Star, and a Mere Footnote

With Michigan back in the men’s Final Four for the first time in 20 years, the video of Chris Webber’s attempted timeout at the end of the 1993 national championship game between Michigan and North Carolina will surely be shown again and again.

Michigan was trailing, 73-71, with 11 seconds left and had no timeouts, so the Wolverines were assessed a technical foul after Webber’s mental error, giving North Carolina two free throws and the ball. When people reflect on the Fab Five’s last game together, they tend to focus on the Webber gaffe, overlooking Donald Williams, the North Carolina player who was the star of the game.

Williams scored the last 4 points in the Tar Heels’ 77-71 victory, making the two technical free throws and also the two free throws after Michigan fouled on the ensuing possession.

He won the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player Award as a sophomore after scoring 25 points in both the semifinal victory over Kansas and the title game win over Michigan — yet because of the Webber miscue, he is often lost in the shuffle of memories.

“I wanted to, that was my dream,” Williams, 40, said recently during a phone interview from North Carolina, where he just finished his first season as the boys’ basketball coach at Northwood High School in Pittsboro and also serves as an intervention assistant for at-risk children at his alma mater Garner High School. “I always thought I should have played in the N.B.A. But I now know I was just blessed to have as long of a basketball career as I did have.”

Williams was a 1991 McDonald’s High School all-American. When he joined Dean Smith’s program, North Carolina featured four McDonald’s all-Americans: point guard Derrick Phelps, small forward Brian Reese and center Eric Montross from 1990 and forward George Lynch from 1989.

Williams played sparingly as a freshman and averaged 2.2 points a game. But as a sophomore, he emerged as one of the team’s biggest offensive threats, making 42 percent of his 3-point attempts and averaging 14.3 points. He was the team’s third-leading scorer during the regular season behind Montross (15.8) and Lynch (14.7).

North Carolina had a well-balanced offense, and it was not surprising that Williams came up big in the Final Four, said Montross, who played eight seasons in the N.B.A. and is now a radio broadcaster for North Carolina basketball.

Photo

Donald Williams, front, scored 25 points to lead North Carolina past Michigan in the national championship game in 1993.Credit
Ed Reinke/Associated Press

“Any given night you could have Henrik Rodl have a big game,” Montross said. “You could have George or myself or Donald or Brian Reese or Derrick Phelps. Everybody had a role and yet everybody expanded on that role if that was something that the team needed. We all knew what a great shooter Donald was, and if the opportunity presented itself, he would get it done.”

In the Final Four, Williams was 10 for 14 from 3-point range — 5 for 7 in each game.

“So much of our offense was inside-outside based, and Donald was great at finding the open avenue,” Montross said. “Fewer and fewer guards know how to move without the ball, and Donald was really good at that. He was able to find the areas that were open, so that when I turned crosscourt, he was the guy that I saw. Obviously a terrific shooter. And when the opportunity presented itself, he was really able to knock them down that year.”

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Williams was defending Michigan guard Jimmy King under the North Carolina basket when Webber mistakenly called timeout.

“At the time, I didn’t know they didn’t have any timeouts,” Williams said. “When I found out they didn’t, I just knew it was over.” Williams averaged 14.3 points as a junior and 15.5 as a senior, when the Tar Heels once again advanced to the Final Four before losing to Arkansas, the eventual runner-up. He went undrafted in 1995 and later played in Poland, Sweden, Finland, and the Philippines. He retired in 2008.

“Once I got married and had kids, I just couldn’t wait around for the N.B.A.,” said Williams, who went to camps with the Los Angeles Lakers, Detroit and Philadelphia. “I had to go to Europe and take care of myself financially.”

Montross said he was surprised Williams never caught on in the N.B.A.

“I don’t think it was anything that Donald didn’t have,” he said. “If he had a couple more inches, maybe it would have made a difference, or maybe not. I just think the N.B.A., you have to be in the right place at the right time to catch hold.”

Williams said he always wanted to be a basketball coach when his playing career ended. He said he learned a lot from Smith about managing egos, which had helped him as a coach and youth mentor.

“Because being a coach, you’re more than a coach, dealing with the egos and the personalities,” he said. “You’re a counselor, their mamas, their daddies, all wrapped into one.”

Drew Cook was a high school teammate of Williams’s. Two years ago, Cook, who is now the principal at Garner, hired Williams to help monitor the after-school detention program. Williams, Cook said, remains as humble as he was in high school, and that he commands respect for his basketball accomplishments and his disposition.

“Some of our most-difficult-to-reach at-risk people, they weren’t even born when he did what he did during that run in 1993, and even up through his senior year,” Cook said. “They’ll go back and look at YouTube videos when they found out he played. Once they get to meet him and know him, and he imparts some of his knowledge and his ideals on them, I think they come to universally respect him. Just having that role model for kids is a great thing.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2013, on Page SP3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Final Four Star, and a Mere Footnote . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe